In the Company of Others (8 page)

Pardell, currently sliding along using his right clip, brought up the left one in time to snag a cross-cable, pulling himself to a halt.

The instant he stopped moving, he knew he'd made a mistake, for the
something
, which with any respect for physics should have continued in its trajectory, stopped as well. It hovered alongside where he hung, looking for all the world like a forlorn and misdirected work 'bot—except that, instead of the lurid yellow of a station 'bot, this tiny satellite was a dishonest black, as though to prevent it from standing out in the sunlight.

Not that there were any station 'bots
, Pardell reminded himself. Everyone knew the last one had been brought down by 'sider fire in the same conflict that slagged the
Endeavour
's hull, adding a lengthy list of dangerous work assignments to those now done by living beings.

Pardell's mouth went dry as he pumped his legs to start sliding down the cable that led away from his home, daring the spy to follow him deeper into the network of metal that could snag it in the blink of an eye. He was disappointed when the operator refused his bait, but the 'bot wouldn't last long anyway. Spies weren't tolerated.

One thing was certain
, Pardell decided with a chill for once having nothing to do with his suit.
The Earther wasn't trouble.

She was disaster.

“IT'S simply asking for disaster!” Forester said, hands waving wildly enough to bring Grant's omnipresent guards to semi-alertness. “What could have possessed you to breach our rules like that? What gave you the right to risk everything we've managed to achieve?”

“It was a mechanical failure—a mistake—and we have apologized,” Captain Tobo replied, with possibly a shade too much emphasis,
but then
, Gail thought,
by her count it was the sixth time he'd made the same point.

She schooled her face into something pleasantly neutral, having needed to make her point only once: the Earth Research Council vessel was hers and, while on board the
Seeker
, Administrator Forester was her guest. He'd minded his manners—at least made no overt threats—and, despite his passionate outrage, appeared inclined to believe their protestations that the 'bot hadn't carried recording equipment, only a short-range visual feed meant to show the exterior of their ship. Nothing that could transmit the length of the station.

They'd seen nothing.

Gail was convinced this was a belief the stationer preferred, rather than held. In her case, it happened to be the truth, but only because the uproar from the station had been too immediate to give her time to view what kept Grant tight-lipped and Tobo apologizing.
Tobo
, Gail thought curiously,
never apologized.

Forester had shown up outside the
Seeker
's air lock before the 'bot had completed half its planned passage over Thromberg Station, a passage terminated by a station-run barge with a net—that much they'd told her. Strident official protests from almost every imaginable station bureaucrat had arrived almost simultaneously, clogging the comm system.
So much for stealth.
They might as well have batted a wasp nest from a tree and expected its inhabitants to ignore the event. Gail hooded her eyes, looking at Grant. Among the many questions she'd reserved for later was how the station had detected the military's little spy within minutes of its launch.
Something wasn't adding up
, Gail decided, but she didn't have time for new puzzles.

Time.
It had always been her enemy. Hers was a mind that raced through problems, grasping concepts in a flash of insight before moving hungrily to new ideas. So few processed at her speed that she'd long ago learned to break her dissertations into palatable chunks for academic reviewers; learned to accommodate, if never to understand, why it always took them longer to see the obvious connections.

It was a hard-learned patience, a skill she practiced even now, having needed it lately more than ever.

Her parents, while appreciating Gail's gift, had known she would need such tools to survive it. She'd spent her summer vacations with a series of private tutors, receiving training in deportment and speech more suited to someone planning to run for public office than a seven-year-old missing her front teeth; lessons, as she grew older, ranging from meditation to manners, based in as broad a range of ethnicities as possible. She'd shown a flare for diplomacy, for understanding cultural patterns and how forces shaped societies.

A flare, but no desire. For as long as she could remember, Gail had known exactly what she wanted. She wanted a problem to solve—a problem no one else could overcome. Something that would make all of Earth sit up and take notice.

The Quill.

In her teens, Gail abandoned the social sciences and became a biologist. A brilliant one. But the Earth had thousands of brilliant biologists. She switched universities, studied xenobiology and terraforming. The Earth had hundreds of experts in those fields, most out of work. Even the never-inhabited Stage One and Two terraform worlds had been posted with warn offs. In case.

Finally, she became an analytical historian, specializing in recent events, pouring through manifests and records, publishing astonishing works detailing for the first time the most probable course taken by the Quill, postulating the direction of their origin—the first solid evidence as to the home of the deadly pests.

But no one cared.

The new worlds, confirmed or potentially contaminated, were abandoned; the stations were left to deal with their populations; and the Quill were merely
something
out there—something convenient to blame for the quiet, steady reduction in Earther exploration funding, for the drawing inward and consolidation of Earth's once-vast ambitions to endless renovations of the domed colonies on Sol System's immediate neighbors.

They'd cared once. When Gail was born, there were research facilities being established throughout Sol System, all devoted to finding a way to destroy Quill tissue without harming the tender Terran ecosystems built at such cost and with such hopes. They floundered on the same rock—there was no Quill tissue to test. Every known specimen had been destroyed in the frenzy to protect humanity. The contaminated worlds? The pests were there—the Quill Effect killed every human foolish enough to land—but the most sophisticated remotes and robot probes failed to retrieve a scrap of Quill tissue. It couldn't be found.

Earth had given up years ago.
She hadn't.

“Dr. Smith?”

Surprised her attention had wandered, Gail shook her head slightly, gambling she would probably disagree with anything the stationer proposed, heard or not. Tobo's lips quirked, as though he knew perfectly well she'd lost track of what was going on, before he said helpfully: “I have no objections to letting the station techs keep the 'bot and give it a once-over. Maybe they can find out why it cut loose from its protocols and went roaming.”

“Commander?” Gail raised her brow to get Grant's reaction. It was the FD's toy, after all.

There was nothing to read from his composed features. “I've no objection, Doctor,” Grant offered smoothly. “Ship's equipment has nothing to do with me.”

Administrator Forester didn't bother hiding his relief.
Why? What was going on here?
Gail wondered again, intrigued in spite of herself. “Thank you. I'm sure that will go a long way toward alleviating any—” he appeared to struggle for a word, then settled on a lame: “—any questions about what happened.”

“You take your privacy very much to heart here,” Gail observed dryly. “Rest assured, I have no interest in Thromberg Station or its population, with the exception of obtaining the assistance of Aaron Pardell. Have you made any progress in locating him for me?”

Forester's face tried to work into a smile but failed. “Surely there's someone else who can help you, Dr. Smith,” he ventured, with an almost desperate air. “I can't imagine what possible use this man could be, even if we find him. I have to tell you in all honesty: this Aaron Pardell may not even exist.”

“That's not the message you sent to Titan U, Administrator,” Gail reminded him, chilling her voice several degrees. “In that, you claimed to have his birth record. I trust you aren't about to tell us that was a lie.”

“No! No. Well, not a lie ...” Forester, who'd been standing during his tirade against the
Seeker
's deployment of a potential spy, chose that moment to sink into the seat he'd been offered and earlier refused. Out of the corner of her eye, Gail noticed Grant's two guards weren't relaxing.
Probably enjoyed having something to do
, she told herself, making a private vow to keep them very busy if Forester was about to tell her they'd come to Thromberg for nothing. “There's no proof this Aaron Pardell was actually born here,” Forester continued. “What's on file is an application for stationer birth registration from an Aaron Raner—on behalf of a child he claimed to have found abandoned. It doesn't say if the application was granted, but I doubt it was. There aren't any other records for the name.”

Gail glanced down at her notepad, tapping a key once, twice, until a very short list of names came up.
There.
“Who is this Raner?” she inquired, keeping her voice matter-of-fact with an effort.

“Raner was a stationer.”

“Was?” Commander Grant prompted when Forester didn't volunteer anything more.

“Was,” repeated Forester firmly, as if that were that. Gail wondered if she'd be forced to have one of Grant's experts tap into the station's record system. They'd refrained until now, hoping for cooperation.
This
, she decided,
didn't sound as though much more would be forthcoming.

Meanwhile
. . . Gail opened her eyes exactly the amount to show her innocent attention. “If we believe the application was for a real baby, Administrator, then Aaron Pardell was born shortly after the stations imposed absolute birth control on their populations. Surely there aren't many individuals his age—”

Forester leaped to his feet, his cheeks suffused with red. “Get your history straight, Dr. Smith,” he grated. “The stations didn't impose birth control. Earth ordered the sterilization of permanent station residents and controls on immigrant fertility as a condition for food shipments. It was obey or starve—but we had children when this all started. And plenty were orphans.”

Gail lifted two fingers to hold Grant and his people, waiting until they'd definitely eased back before saying softly, and quite sincerely, to the outraged stationer: “I'm deeply sorry, Administrator. I meant no offense, nor to bring back difficult times and terrible choices. But, despite your lack of records, I'm convinced a man named Aaron Pardell is here, on Thromberg. So, if his age can't help narrow our search, what can? You know your people. Will he come forward of his own accord?”

“No. I'm sure he won't.” Forester remained standing, a posture aimed, not at the anxious troops, but at her—as if defending one of his own.
So
, Gail told herself.
He wasn't completely motivated by self-interest.
Such an individual would have been more—straightforward—to work with, if less than trustworthy in a pinch.

“Why?” she asked, truly curious.

“You're Earthers,” Forester said, his tone making it clear her question surprised him. “If the welfare of all of us hasn't mattered to you before now—why should the welfare of one?”

“Had you considered that the welfare of this one might have an impact on everyone else on the station?” she suggested carefully, wary of what she might be revealing to Tobo and Grant, let alone Forester and the vids she knew full well Reinsez regularly tried to plant in her office.

She'd misjudged Forester's intelligence as well, or maybe life under Thromberg's harsh conditions had honed his instincts. “You're after the Survivor,” the stationer breathed as if thoroughly impressed, then burst into laughter with an almost hysterical edge to it, his thin shoulders shaking. “Gods, if that doesn't beat all. You and this fancy Earther ship, these troops in their me-only uniforms—falling for that tired nonsense.”

Gail was spared having to answer by Tobo's quick: “You aren't making sense yourself, Administrator. What are you talking about?”

“This place breeds a lot of stories, Captain,” Forester gasped, almost wheezing as he attempted to regain something of his dignity. “Hang around long enough and you'll hear even wilder ones. Maybe you'll find one more to your liking!”

Gail steepled her fingers on her desk. “Administrator, I'm many things, but I am not a fool. The Survivor Legends are just as widespread in Sol System as here.”
A minor exaggeration.
For Tobo, she added, “The details vary, but all revolve around a brave hero who lands on one of the contaminated worlds and returns with the secret of how to withstand the Quill Effect. Some versions include the establishment of a hidden colony. Some have the Survivor forgetting the secret and wandering from station to station trying to find it again, only to fail. Others have him—or her—becoming the savior of humanity.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do I have the essence of it correct, Administrator Forester?”

Mirth forgotten, Forester nodded, tight-lipped.

Gail hardened her voice slightly, tapping her fingers on the desk in emphasis. “So, perhaps you can accept that we are here for something other than chasing myths, that Earth might have financed this state-of-the-art ship and my considerable expertise for something other than daydreams, and that if I require this individual, Aaron Pardell, perhaps—just perhaps, Administrator—” this with sudden sharpness, “you and your station should bend every resource to my aid instead of offering obstructions.”